With the shipment of over 1.4 million smartphones in both 2016 and 2017, and with nearly 60 percent of all online searches taking place on a mobile device, there is more opportunity than ever for educators to capitalize on the mobile market.
That being said, designing an e-learning course successfully for mobile devices can be a daunting task, so we here at Lambda Solutions have compiled a few tips and tricks to help you along the way.
Understanding the Differences Between Native and Web-Based Content
When creating a mobile e-learning course, your first choice should be whether or not you want that course to be web-based or to be native to mobile devices.
- Web-based e-learning. You design courses for hosting on a website, which can then adapt that course to mobile devices. When accessing a web-based e-learning course, your learners will go through a website hosted across all devices to access that course.
- Native e-learning. You design courses for hosting on a mobile device in the form of an app. These courses will need to be developed by software developers from the ground up to work on an app.
Each of these options has its own strengths and weaknesses. Web-based designs allow all learners, regardless of platform, to access your courses, but mobile users will likely feel that using a mobile website is clunkier than using a streamlined mobile app.
For the best results, consider developing an e-learning course hosted on a website, and then pair that website with a companion app that provides all the same courses tailored to mobile devices to make your mobile users feel right at home.
Understanding Responsive, Adaptive, and Mobile-First Design Philosophies
- Responsive web design is a term used to describe a technique that makes a website's size shrink or expand based on the size of a user's screen. Responsive web design allows users to have a consistent viewing experience when accessing a website, regardless of their device's screen size.
- Adaptive design, in league with responsive design, allows a website to adapt its display size to certain preconfigured screen sizes. This means that adaptively designed websites will allow for the same viewing experiences as responsively designed websites, but may offer that experience to fewer users or may not work for users with oddly sized devices.
- Mobile-first designs are websites that are first designed on a mobile phone, then transferred to other devices such as desktops. This design approach circumvents the issue of having to adapt to a desktop web design to a phone, instead of working in reverse to make sure mobile users have an ideal experience.
Finally, Understanding the Philosophy Behind Mobile Courses
E-learning courses have to be designed with a different philosophy from traditional e-learning courses.
Here are a few tips:
- Take your audience into account. Mobile users want fast, concise experiences that tell them what they need to know in a short time-frame. Consider using graphics or interactive presentations to help engage your mobile learners.
- In congruence with the previous point, cut down your mobile e-learning courses into bite-sized points or keynote statements to make them easier to digest. Removing the fluff will increase your success. Readability and easily consumable content are the hallmarks of successful mobile design.
- Finally, play to the strengths of mobile devices. If you're working with an app, be sure to create fun ways for users to interact with that app. Gamifying learning is incredibly easy with mobile devices. Use this to your advantage!